The script basically runs on form save provided it is a new record, and copies the Owner lookup value to Organizer lookup, if the Organizer lookup does not contain any value.

The reason the Organizer field is important is because, without this being set, that appointment won’t show up in the appointment creator’s Outlook (even though they created it and they are also the owner).

This issue is happening in 8.1.0 and has been possibly fixed in 8.2.0.

If you decide not to use the CRM App for Outlook, syncing emails, contacts and appointments using just Server Side Sync and Forward Mailbox can be really painful sometimes, especially when you are troubleshooting why something is not being synced. The “Server-Side Synchronization Monitoring” Dashboard provides some assistance to the Administrator, but when you want to dig into the details, I often end up using “FetchXML Builder” or “LinqPad” to query the TraceLog entity. Below is the fetchxml I use

Another common scenario that I troubleshoot is, why an appointment is not synced to Outlook after it was created in CRM. The first thing to check in this case is the user’s sync filter. I use the XrmToolBox tool “Sync Filter Manager” to check what the user’s sync filter for appointment. After confirming that the fetchxml picks up the appointment that has to be synced, we can now proceed to stage 2 of troubleshooting.

The field that is key in this scenario is called “GlobalObjectId“. This field in the appointment entity will be set, after the appointment is synced to the user’s Outlook. Unfortunately, this field is marked as not searcheable, which means it cannot be used in Advanced Find.

But, we can still create view that shows the synced appointments and appointments that have not been synced, using FetchXML Builder. Below are the steps

Install FetchXML Builder from XrmToolBox store, if you don’t have it already

Save an existing view into a new view on appointment entity. Don’t worry about the filters yet as we will update this using FetchXML Builder

Next step is to open this view in FetchXML Builder

Update the fetchxml and save the view. Confirm the user’s sync filter for appointment using the Sync Filter Manager and make sure the new fetchxml criteria match with the user’s sync filter criteria

If you try to use the view from Advanced Find, you will get this error.

This means you have to use FetchXML Builder to update you fetchxml, if any changes are required in the future. If you want to add more columns to the view, you’ll have to use “View Designer” to do that, as you would not be able to use Advanced Find to do this, because of this error.

I hope this post will help you troubleshoot future appointment sync issues.

When you follow the “lift and shift” upgrade method i.e. backup the old CRM database, restore it in the target environment and run deployment manager to import the organisation database, upgrade should be relatively easy. But, recently I experienced an issue that was such a pain to troubleshoot, I thought I will share this experience so that it will be helpful to others.

Below is the error I got when I import the organisation database using Deployment Manager.

This is what is captured in the deployment manager log (%AppData%\Roaming\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs)

It looks like the database server name is wrong. But it is not. I used “Process Monitor” to troubleshoot the error. Here is what “Process Monitor” picked up.

As you can see, the underlying error is a caused to lack of permissions to copy a dll file to a UNC path pointing to the database server.

Cause: McAfee Antivirus was blocking copy of any dlls through UNC path.

Resolution: Turn off “On Access Scanner” and “Access Protection” features of McAfee Antivirus during the organisation import.

In my case the KB article for SqlServerPathOverrides caused me to waste more time. I still had the same issue even after creating the network share, as McAfee was blocking all dll copy operations to UNC paths.

I have been battling with getting server side sync and forward mailbox working the way I want it to over the last couple of weeks. Googling hasn’t helped me a lot on this regard, and so in this post I will explain my understanding of the server side sync process.

The biggest hurdle that I faced in understanding the server side sync process is how little detail there is in the mailbox sync errors. I am not talking about the CRM Tracing, just the standard OOB logging in the application (like workflow error). Lot of times, I have seen unknown errors and mailboxes getting disabled randomly, but no detailed log in the application to indicate what the issue could be.

Based my tests, here is how I think it works for incoming email. The same is true for outbound emails. I am assuming that the mailboxes are not disabled and email address is approved:

Async service starts to process the email at time specified in the PostponeMailboxProcessingUntil field

Async service starts processing the inbound emails and creates email records in CRM

In order to set the PostponeMailboxProcessingUntil and the ReceivingPostponedUntil, for the next run async service looks into the NoEmailCount field field. The NoEmailCount field is incremented every time the async service attempts to process email. If it did create some emails in CRM, the counter is reset to zero.

Based on my tests, I believe that if no email is sent/received in 15 minutes, the polling period is fixed at around 5 minutes. Here are my test results.

As you can see based on my tests, the polling interval gradually starts climbing when there are no emails to process and hovers around 5 minutes, after 15 minutes of inactivity i.e. no email records were created on CRM and/or no emails were sent from CRM.

If you have a queue setup in CRM, and forward an email to the queue, 5 minutes is a very long time to wait for the async service to pickup the email from Exchange. I saw couple of posts about how this polling interval can be changed by modifying the “Minimum Polling Interval” field.

The recommended value for this field is “0” and even when I changed this to 1 minute, I haven’t seen it influence the “ProcessingLastAttemptedOn“. I tried to change “PostponeMailboxProcessingUntil” and “ReceivingPostponedUntil” for the mailbox though the SDK, but since they are readonly fields, they cannot be changed. All the tests were carried out in OnPrem CRM2015, and so I cannot confirm whether this is the same behaviour in CRM2016 or Dynamics 365.

EDIT (18/11/2016): This 5 minute polling interval seems to be a “by-design” behavior. Thank you Andre Margono for sending this info. Here is what the MSDN article says:

When synchronization by using server-side synchronization occurs, the process is dynamic and unique for each user’s mailbox. The synchronization algorithm ensures that mailboxes are synced according to dynamic parameters such as the number of email messages and the activity within the mailbox. Normally, email synchronization occurs every 5 minutes. When a mailbox has many email messages, the interval can be reduced dynamically to 2 minutes. If the mailbox is less active, the interval can be increased up to 12 minutes. Generally speaking, you can assume that a mailbox will be synced at least once every 12 minutes. Note that you can’t manually synchronize records through server-side synchronization and when you track email (Track button), this occurs immediately.

tl;dr; If your CRM application is not processing any email (sending/receiving) in 15 minutes, the polling interval will eventually be fixed at around 5 minutes. When an email is received, async service will start processing more frequently, but the polling period will slowly climb with no-activity until it gets to 5 minutes.

One of the less utilised/understood feature of Business Rule is Process Triggers. In this post, I will explain what a process trigger is and how you can use this in the context of business rule.

The Basics

Business Rule is basically a workflow that has a different UI compared to the standard workflow editor. You can quickly find all the business rules in your CRM instance by running this query.

Internals – How does Business Rules work

You can basically skip this part, if you are not interested in understanding the internals on how a business rules work. When you create a business rules you basically have all these components that make the business rules run seamlessly:

The client side code that runs on the form

The server side workflow defined in xaml

Process trigger -> This dictates when the business rule logic should execute

When you design a business rule, it is automatically translated into a workflow xaml that executes on the server side and JavaScript code that executes on the client side.

Now, let us take a simple example of a business rule that sets the “Salutation”, when “Gender” is changed. Here is the business rule

When you save this business rule, this is automatically translated into JavaScript, code that can run on the client side. Below is the JavaScript code that is generated by CRM, for this business rule:

From the above, triggering code we can see that the business rule is going to run when the form is opened, as the function “pbl_109af564df34e51180eac4346bc576e8” is called when the business rule is initiated. The function also executes when “Gender” is changed.

If you want to know what the generated JavaScript code for the business rule is, just get the “ClientData” field in the “Workflow” entity. You cannot get this field from Advanced Find. You can either use FetchXML Builder (a XrmToolBox tool) or LINQPad. Below is the fetchxml query, I used.

If you also get the “xaml” field on the workflow entity, you can see the markup server side workflow logic that will execute.

Process Trigger

Process Trigger dictates the events that will trigger the execution of business rule. There are three events:

Load

Change

Save

“Load” and “Change” are the standard triggers when the business rule is created through the UI. “Save” is a special handler. It can only be set using the SDK and not through the UI. It behaves little differently compared to “Load”. The JavaScript code that is generated for “Save” is little different compared to the code that is generated for “Load”. Here is the LINQ query I used for getting process triggers for this workflow.

Now let us update the “load” trigger to “save”, so that the generated JavaScript for the business rule will run only on “Form Save” event and not on “Form Load”. Here is the simple snippet I ran to do this, after I got the ids of the process trigger in the previous LINQ Query. These process triggers are for the “load” events associated to our business rule. You have to deactivate the business rule, before you update the process trigger for the business rule.

Now comes the important bit: Activate the business rule from the Advanced Find results (first screenshot). Don’t activate the business rule from the standard business rule window. If you activate the business rule from the standard UI, your process trigger will reset back to “load”

Now that the trigger is set to “Save”, lets compare the generated JavaScript code.

As we can see, in the case of “save” process trigger, the client side business rule code runs only on “Save”. I like this, because I don’t want the business rule to run on “load” and confuse the user with “Unsaved changes” message. I will demonstrate this with a scenario.

Scenario: User opens a contact record, which doesn’t have the “Salutation” field set. Gender contains a valid value. The process trigger is “load”

As you can see from the above screenshot, the business rule ran immediately on form load, and set the Salutation to “Mr”. Hence, you have a unsaved changes message, on the bottom right. I am not very happy with this result because, it is not obvious to the user what changed and what caused the change. I want more control, so I want this rule to run only after “Save”. Now look at the same form, when the trigger is “Save”

As you can see, the “Salutation” field is not set immediately. It will be set only

When the form is saved OR

When the “Gender” field is changed

One more thing: Every time when you deactivate and reactivate a business rule, new process triggers records are created, and so you have to get the correct ids when you update the “event” attribute.

I hope you can now understand the internals of business rule and how to use process trigger to control its behaviour.

When you create a new entity, one of the fields that is generally left unchanged is the primary field for the entity. It is usually “[publisherprefix]_name”.

This field can be either required or left optional. This value of this field, is what shows up in the entity lookups. The value of this field is usually set automatically using JavaScript, Workflow or Plugin. If the value for this field is left null, it manifests a bug in the realtime workflow.

What is the bug?

If the value of the primary field is null on a parent entity, any child entity can’t use “if condition” on the parent relationship field. It would result in a “KeyNotFound” exception.

Replication steps

Create an entity that will be the parent entity

Create an entity that will be the child. Create a relationship to the parent entity

Make the primary field on the parent entity as optional

Create a new realtime workflow on the child entity, with a condition statement that refers the parent lookup field in the child entity

Create a parent record without the name field set

Create a child record that has the parent lookup set the record created in the previous step. The parent lookup will be displayed as “no name” as the primary field for the parent entity is not set.

Execute the realtime workflow against the child record in the previous step. A “The given key was not present in the dictionary” exception will be displayed

The issue is happening both in CRM 2015 and CRMOnline on version 8.1.0.362. This issue seems to be only affecting realtime workflows and actions, and not background workflows.

Most of the cool new features unveiled by Microsoft, are available in CRMOnline only. But, full text search is one of the features that is OnPremise only. It was made available with CRM2015 Update 0.1. By default, this is turned off. In order to turn on this feature you’ll have to head over to “Settings” area and select “Yes” next to “Enable full-text search for Quick Find”

While testing out this feature in our DEV environment, I uncovered, what I consider, a major bug with the feature. The bug is this:

If you have turned on full text search, you lose the ability to alter the length of the text fields on any customisable entity.

If this OK in your case, you have nothing to worry. For others, read on.

Replication steps

Use the query below to identify the full text indexes and the entity text fields

Try to increase of decrease the length of any of these fields from the entity customisation area. If you try to save the attribute after increasing or decreasing the length, you will get a generic SQL exception.

Our test environment, that doesn’t have full text search enabled, doesn’t suffer from this issue. I was thinking of manually deleting the full text index from the base table and then updating the attribute length, but I didn’t do so, as I haven’t fully analysed the impact of doing this.

The downloaded error file doesn’t help to identify the root cause of this issue.